Twelve Days
by tami3
Summary: Kanda is coming back. Lavi is not. Kanda/Lavi. Complete.
1. Chapter 1

Twelve Days

Kanda is coming back. Lavi is not. Kanda/Lavi

"_In twelve days, I will forget…"_

_-Jackie, 12 days_

One

?

Date unknown.

He's watched, oh so carefully, as his head tilts back. His mouth falls open into a gap and they lean in, as if birds could fly out.

He thinks several things at once. The first is a slow and sticky realization, a sugar spill enveloping his brain: "I can't. Not anymore."

Second, a memory. An impression. There's a clarity to the eyes, like a polish, when pain takes you so unexpectedly the body isn't even prepared for tears. There had been a deep and savage triumph in teaching Kanda a new kind of hate and hurt, when Kanda had been so arrogant about knowing them all already.

Then there's the last, that's the one that sticks. He thinks, stunned: "I've been written out." Out of Kanda's story, out of his own. Out of any story that counts. And that, that's just the best, it's a joke, it's what he asked for.

Out of the black yawn of his dropped jaw comes laughter. It's horrible. They wouldn't know, because horror is their bread and butter. They do stare, curious and slightly cross at him. But in any case, it's not what they are looking for. So they stick another finger in his heart and wriggle, to see what else they can jimmy out.

Two

A few months ago.

Lavi is alone in the field right before sunset. All around him are puddles that seeped out of the mud in weepy discs. The oranging sun tints them opaque and yellow like saucers full of fresh golden milk. Saffron, he thinks. Appropriate. But only to a point, since saffron is technically harvested from crocuses.

So maybe poppy milk instead. Swollen pods, slashed and dripping potent, creamy amber. For long, sweet dreams.

He crouches and slips his hands into one. There's a rush of baleful warmth, the soaking-in of the day. It feels like a human heat, comforting and septic. Breaking the puddle's surface turns it back into simple water, and the blood from his scratches eddies up in smoky red wisps.

Kanda would have said, stupid, why would you try to catch rocks with your hands? Lavi might have answered back irritably, because it's preferable to catching them with your face.

But Kanda might have driven off the stone-casters for him too, not even needing Mugen. He would have given them one look of incredulous contempt, and the villagers would have slunk off in shame. He would have washed Lavi's wounds and rested Lavi's head onto his shoulder, like teammates huddling close after the game has been lost.

Or he might have said, turn back.

Lavi wouldn't have, so Kanda might have tackled him wrestled and wrested until he had Lavi permanently entombed in the mud. Preserved in the pools of saffron milk or poppy juice or the just plain water that cleans before it drowns. After all, past experience dictates that it's easier to keep people in storage than to fight them.

Or love them.

Kanda is not here.

Lavi washes out the cuts on his palms and face.

Three

A year ago.

Kanda drifts through a maze of gold, magenta, cerulean, and corroded copper green. Hands run over the wares hanging on the stalls, sending bell-likes sounds rippling through the market. Open sacks of spices in rich mineral hues stew the air into a complex soup, made unappetizing by the underlying stink of animals in the street. Gold studs in noses, crimson dots on foreheads, loosely wound pink and turquoise saris. They flash by as shoppers step around him, arm in arm. Men crowd together in teashops to debate the sins of their statesmen.

In all this muted disorder, Kanda thinks only one thing.

He hates Lavi.

Lavi is tucking a flower into the tie of his hair. He says, "Hey look, they're selling lotuses, they're beautiful!…Yuu, what's wrong? I thought you liked lotuses, you have that one in your room!"

Kanda wants to punch Lavi in his stupid face.

Lavi is one of the few people who approaches Kanda outside of work. (Which is different from being noticed. Everyone notices Kanda, in the same way one would notice a crack in the ceiling that might one day give way to a collapsed roof and kill them all.) Approaches him with teasing, and unwanted affection, and thoughtless little gifts like the lotus in his hair.

It doesn't matter how much Kanda tries to discourage him with death threats and actual murder attempts. The dogged determination to be his friend feels familiar in a way that makes Kanda sick.

They've known each other for two years now. That's longer than he knew Alma.

Not like he can summon much of a memory of Alma's friendship anymore. The jokes, the mornings in the incubation room, the sleepy-sweet times of waking up from nightmares and limbs dropping off together… Those few months, they boil away into the blackened tar of the last few moments.

But scratch Alma. Alma had tried to kill him. And fair enough, because Kanda had tried to kill him right back. So they're even. That's all done with now.

Lavi is smiling bemusedly at the petals, torn up and strewn around his feet.

Kanda knows Lavi well enough by now that the know-it-all, expert on war and conditions for stalemates, would look him straight in the eye and say no, you aren't. Because you came out ahead, didn't you?

Which is why Kanda deliberately loses Lavi the next time a swell of people divides them. As he goes about the city by himself through the morning, there are icons and statues and actual lotuses everywhere. He hates India.

That flower that Lavi put in my hair, he thinks. That was fresh. They must grow nearby.

She appears in his sightline, as clear as if she were real, flying past in a billow of skirts that he could count the number of flounces on. She stops short, hair and dress falling into place as she stands in a hollow of lotus flowers. Her smile radiant, her hand extends towards him, the expectancy in it more loving than a kiss.

Because, as she says, "Forever…"

And then she is gone again. Kanda is alone in a buzzing crowd.

He thinks, I killed Alma. I killed Alma for you because you said you're waiting for me. And I'm no closer to you now than the day he died.

Lavi is sulking in the reception area when Kanda walks in. He looks up from where he's sprawled out on the couch.

"Thanks for ditching me. I thought you were a professional. Are we going to go looking for this thing or what?"

"I got it already."

"What?"

"I got it. The innocence. The mission's done, I already called Komui. I just bought our tickets for the first train tomorrow."

Lavi spasms a bit and starts to say something, but Kanda cuts him off

"I couldn't get seats in the same car. Too short notice. I don't think I'm going to be tired tonight, so I'm going to stay downstairs and write up the report. Lucky you, you'll have the room to yourself. I guess I'll see you tomorrow when we leave." Kanda lies, smooth as ice.

Something crosses Lavi's face, but it's there and gone. Right away he is beaming, only glad that the mission is a success.

"Great! That saves me a lot of time and work. Thanks Yuu, I guess that frees me up to explore. This is a great city, just think about what's out there! "

Kanda is no longer listening, but Lavi continues to babble: "Yeah so… I'm just going to nip upstairs and give Bookman and the others a call, you never know what information he'd want about a place given the opportunity. And hey, time for souvenir shopping!"

Lavi nimbly hops off the chair and bounds up the stairs.

"Thank again, Yuu!" He calls over his shoulder.

Kanda watches him go, idly vicious in his satisfaction in having handled him. Lavi is much smarter than Alma ever was. Alma had believed, against all evidence, that Kanda was a good person. He thought Kanda cared about the people around him, and would sacrifice for them. He was wrong, and that's why he's dead.

Meanwhile, Lavi (mostly correctly) assumes that Kanda is ruthlessly self-interested, and there's a story behind how he got that way. Usually true, but Kanda at least notices other people when they start to become a problem for him. He knows there's a reason why Lavi asked to go on this mission with him, and it has something to do with that dark side of Lavi that no one seems to like. It's been snooping around the lotus, and the second exorcist program, and though he doesn't know it, Alma and that person.

The bags were sent ahead from the station and Lavi's already checked himself in, but Kanda has to get his own key from the man behind the counter. When he goes upstairs to deposit the innocence, the door is ajar and he can hear Lavi on his golem.

"It's not working. I can't do it anymore right now, not with him. It's too hard. He's wearing me out."

There's a silence of a reply, and in a low voice, Lavi agrees,

"No. I don't have much time left."

When Lavi sees Kanda, Kanda expects him to jump to his feet. Instead he keeps his back flush to the bed, but lifts his chin up a little to meet Kanda's gaze. The turned up angle of his nose makes him look a little haughty. There is something setting in his face like a mold, languid and unpleasant.

Kanda stares. He wants nothing to do with this scene. He has to say something to excuse himself from it, but what?

"I'll leave you alone, then." He says finally, and turns to go.

"It's nothing, you know." Lavi calls as he's one foot out the door.

"Okay."

"There's nothing going on."

"I believe you. I'm going."

"No you don't," Lavi says dismissively, making Kanda glance back despite himself.

"You know what your problem is? You think there's nothing worse than someone finding out that thing you're so desperate to hide. There is. It's no one ever finding out. "

Lavi sits up, stretching. There's something hostile in it.

"But you know what, Yuu…today I'm going to do something a little bad and have some fun," He announces with a wink.

"What, are you going whoring?" Kanda asks reluctantly, somewhat accusingly.

Lavi clasps his hands over his heart, falling back into the bed in mock surprise. "Yuu! That language! Who even knew you had it in you!" He bounces playfully but his tone is remarkably cold.

"No. I'm going to spend the day with you."

Kanda doesn't even like to think it because it's so absurd…but the first time ever, he's a little afraid of Lavi.

They end up the Ganges with a flock of glittering, happy children at play. Kanda would have stayed on shore, but Lavi can be surprisingly strong and dragged him in by the wrist. Once in the water, Kanda shoved Lavi hard in the back, but he only came up sputtering and laughing, immediately splashing some pretty, squealing girls close to their age nearby.

Kanda watches sourly as some little girls and boys fearlessly run up to Lavi, grab his hands and show him how stomp at the water like there's something to kill in it. Kanda starts to make his way to dry land, but a big boy thinks he's part of the game and runs right into him, knocking him over.

The water quickly closes over his face and it becomes dark. Kanda is livid as he feels a foot tromping on his shoulder. The child is already past, his departing heel sluicing against Kanda's waterlogged ear.

He lashes out, but finds no purchase. Tendrils of his hair float into his eyes and he angrily turns his head to get clear of them.

And there she is. Her dress is spread out around her like the folds of an inky jellyfish. Her arms are limp. She's falling backward with her back arched, a stream of bubbles escaping from her mouth. Drowning-

His hand reaches out for her and slashes right through her body—

-Then Lavi is hoisting him to his feet. Kanda coughs and spits up water like an idiot.

"Yuu, I thought you could swim" Lavi scolds him. Then he shakes his head, confused. "Wait, the water's not even deep. Just stand up next time."

He sloshes back to where the children are calling him.

"That was fun!" Lavi announces as they drip in the streets. The sun is in its zenith and burns to the skin, but unlike the locals in their breathable cottons and linens, Kanda and Lavi are dressed in heavy synthetic blends developed by the Order's R&D. Kanda chafes, itches, and steams from the humidity of his own body. He wants to crack Lavi one more than ever. The only thing stopping him is that this country is literally made of people and he doesn't know if he can get a clear shot. Even now they're surrounded by city denizens, as slow and dense as a flock as sheep now that the day is winding down.

All he can do is seethe and storm forward as furiously as he can in the tidal wave of people in his path, and refuse to answer Lavi.

"This is what life is made of, don't yah think Yuu? Forget battles n' heartbreak, these are the things we shouldn't forget."

What was_ wrong_ with Lavi? The things you can't forget are bad things. The people you can't save. The people you doom.

"We always seem to be running from one apocalyptic disaster to the next, but I've always wished for more times like this. Soldiers at the cantina trading stories and shots, their sweethearts coming to see em' off with a dance and a kiss. Picking up some of the local color, playing games with the local kids. Y' know? Always…" 

Always…

Lavi's tone has gone strange and although it was what Kanda was striving for, there is more distance between them than he would have expected. Kanda turns around, just so he can snap at Lavi to stop acting so weird.

Lavi is standing stock still in the street, dripping as if he just emerged from a pool or got drenched in the blood of a hundred traitors. His expression is hollow like a reaper's and hopeful like loved one's. This comes together badly for Kanda. Something twists hard inside him and leaves him cold.

"What do you think, Yuu? When this war is over, will you remember your friends?"

Unconsciously, he puts more space between him and Lavi, and then just goes, leaving Lavi behind for a second time. He can feel Lavi's eyes boring into his back, green and disappointed. Then the crowd engulfs them in separate bubbles of human bodies and the feeling fades.

The next time Kanda sees Lavi it is almost dark. Lavi sitting on the railing of the balcony connected to their room. There's a long, skinny pipe in his hand in the shape of a flute, or a giant's fingerbone.

"What the hell are you doing? What is that?" Kanda tries to grab the pipe, but Lavi easily ducks out of his reach and darts into the room.

"If you don't know what it is, why are you trying to stop me?"

The words "Is it dangerous?" build up pressure on Kanda's tongue. The pointlessness of asking makes him bite them down. Whether it's dangerous or not, Lavi obviously doesn't care. And it's none of his business what Lavi does.

Lavi throws his head back, exposing the long line of his throat, and blows out straight at the ceiling. The vapor comes out in a rapid stream, like an erupting volcano. A surprisingly pleasant floral note suffuses through the room.

"Ahhhh…God, I've been needing this."

"Are you crazy?"

"Nope, just stressed as fuck. I don't know how you stand being so tightly wound all the time, don't you ever get tired of it?

Kanda doesn't want to get deeper into this, but he wavers and asks, "Are you going to get sick, or…"

Lavi holds out the pipe sideways, the faint blue lines in his bare wrist showing. His eyebrow is raised. Kanda stares at it in consternation. Lavi starts to laugh at him, realizing that Kanda doesn't know how. Kanda can feel himself flushing. He's about to knock the pipe out Lavi's hands, who cares if it breaks—

"Here."

Lavi comes around and hooks Kanda so nonchalantly that he doesn't even have the instinct to resist.

When Lavi turns his head to the side and brings the pipe to his lips, Kanda sees his chest seize from the draught. When Lavi faces Kanda again, his mouth is tight as a seal. The pinch makes him squint, cheeks scrunching up to his short brown lashes. He leans in, tilting slightly to avoid bumping noses.

Kanda opens his mouth, and a stream of smoke with the tangy-sweet scent of rose petals passes between them.

Kanda hadn't even felt Lavi's hand had on his shoulder, bracing him, but now he sees Lavi drawing it back. Lavi puts the pipe down on the table, a dull thump of ceramic on wood. Kanda exhales, turning Lavi into a bloom of fog. By the time it clears, Lavi has tipped himself over contentedly into one of the unmade beds, tangling with the bedding. Lying back, he heaves a sigh.

Kanda sits down next to him, cracking his neck awkwardly. He waits, but he doesn't feel anything. Meanwhile, Lavi's pupil has become a pinpoint of black floating in color. The iris is like a chunk of raw innocence, green and luminous. Lavi smiles.

"Don't tell anyone about today, OK?" he says into the unlit room. Everything is slowly turning indigo from the deepening dusk outside the window.

Kanda glances over at him. Lavi is completely relaxed, loose red hair messily framing his face on the pillow. "Why?" he asks neutrally.

"Just don't." Lavi answers simply, seriously. Which explains nothing, but Kanda understands.

Lavi is afraid of something. It's getting harder for him to hide it, and he doesn't want to face it. He trusts Kanda to not make him, because Kanda is the exact same way.

It's not a trade—Lavi will go back to prying about Kanda's past and his powers soon, and it will be excruciating. Despite the injustice, he knows Kanda will spare him the same. It's not because Kanda doesn't care about other people's problems, or isn't curious, which is what anyone else would assume about him.

Why?

_Because_ _it hurts_ Kanda thinks, looking at him.

Lavi believes that this will make a difference. He believes in Kanda's empathy.

Without thinking about it, Kanda leans down.

Four

The day after a year ago.

Kanda had somewhat expected for Lavi to have a narcotics-induced lie-in, but he is up with Kanda at 6 am and angry. He whirlwinds around the room, throwing things together for their departure even though their train doesn't leave until 10.

"Lavi, yesterday, you—"

"Yesterday, I was on drugs! Are you out of your mind?!" He flounders, visibly tripping himself up. He blushes red and turns jerkily back to his open suitcase. His voice is strained as he tries to close the matter quickly.

"Whatever. Just don't tell anyone, ok?" he says, echoing himself from yesterday. He hears it, gets frustrated, knows that it makes it seem that he was more lucid than he is willing to admit. "Just don't tell anyone!" he repeats nevertheless, growly and wild.

"Lavi, what you said before, about remembering friends—"

"Lay off! You know what, you're off the hook, we're not friends, so it's moot. Just leave it alone."

"You were talking about you, weren't you? You were asking if I'd remember you."

Lavi hands go still inside the contents of his suitcase. All of him does. Kanda waits, watching him put it all together. Maybe Lavi would have asked it of Allen, or Lenalee, or anyone else who happened to be with him, but Kanda is the one who was there.

"I won't call you Yuu anymore."

Of all things to say, that is not something Kanda expected. He's at a loss, and Lavi seem to draw strength from how he doesn't have a reaction ready.

"Do you think I'm stupid?" Lavi questions him sharply, on the offensive. "I already decided a long time ago that there's a reason why you don't like being called that. You have things that you don't want to come out, same as me. Fine, I'll respect that. How about you return the favor?"

Alma's tinny voice reads from the book the scientists gave him about making friends. Making a friend from the only available one in the candidate pool.

"If that person treats you badly, do not hold it against him. You do not know what his struggle is. Be kind to him. Help him through his dark times without any hope of thanks. This is the rarest, most precious friendship of all".

Alma's face comes up from the pages and that funny scar across the bridge crinkles his eyes more than his grin, making him look doubly pleased. Yuu had found the words stupid even while having to grudgingly give Alma credit for being right. Kanda isn't sure he wants to offer, but because Alma was so very dorky and proud for winning over Yuu before he went dark, he commits halfway anyways.

"Lavi…you need help, don't you?"

Lavi tilts his head at him appraisingly.

"What Kanda, you need another ghost to chase?" he says cryptically and cruelly.

The image of Alma sweetly lecturing Yuu about friendship quickly burns away into Alma weeping because he has a reaper's cradle instead of an arm. Edgar bleeding out at the point paints him a different color from head to toe.

Then there's the girl in a field of flowers who is always reaching out for him, in his dreams and waking life. Whoever she is, he knows she's waiting for him. She's been waiting for a long time. And she's just as far away as the day he split Alma in two.

Kanda thinks about the tattoo on his chest, Allen Walker's mutant eye and arm, and Lenalee Lee's shattered legs that only got clumsily glued back together by her innocence. Lavi stands before him with normal limbs and solid footing in the real world, not even disfigured like the rest of them. Forget the eye, Kanda can tell he's faking.

Kanda has never seen a plainer person. What does Lavi know about being a ghost?

"Stop being so melodramatic. You're not a ghost. You're a human. A human with small, sad problems. You could fix them if you bothered to try."

Lavi breaks his nose.

Kanda staggers back with his vision spotty and blood dripping from his hand. It'll heal in a heartbeat but it hurts like a bitch. As if this gesture needed any more clarification, Lavi shakes out his fist to cool down the knuckles, and says

"Go fuck yourself."

Kanda ignores this and barrels into him, knocking him onto the bed. People think Kanda is thin and sprightly, that there must be magic involved in turning him into an ogre when Mugen gets into his hand. He's not and there isn't. He deftly deflects Lavi's blows and uses brute force to seize him in a submission hold. Instead of securing Lavi's arms, he grabs his head and holds it firmly face down. It's like throwing a blanket over a bird. When there is nothing you can see to fight, you go still in the dark.

Lavi thrashes and screams incoherently into his chest, but this doesn't bother Kanda in the least. Kanda waits until he has quieted.

When he has, except for his heavy breathing, Kanda says, "Shut up Lavi. You're going to be fine."

What ensues is a manic tangle of limbs and hair and argument, a minute intermission to clean up the blood, and more argument. They miss the train and don't call. Komui worries himself half to death.

Author's notes:

It's going to be a four-part series.

I don't know what Lavi is smoking. Something made up and harmless, this is fiction.


	2. Chapter 2

Five

Prior to a few months ago.

Kanda was born already in love. Which is sad if you look at the truth of it, because it's why he's been so hateful his entire life.

What about falling in love, then? Not waking up from non-existence to an obsession of unknown origin that wears the heart to shreds. A thing that happens by steps. Something that grows stronger through shared experience.

A bit of a clinical way to put it, but anyways. It's not like Kanda had ever thought about it happening to him. But other people, who have been watching him carefully since (his) day one, do. They've often wondered, "What if?"

* * *

"Oh my god, you're crazy!" Lavi screams.

He's scared out of his mind, but having the time of his life. Kanda has him in a death grip. The wind blasts Lavi's face full on, making him tear up even as he laughs in sheer terror. He tries to struggle his way free, but that's actually more dangerous. Kanda keeps a hold on him.

"What, don't you like this?" Kanda shouts over the air streaming almost painfully in their ears. It's cold, and no wonder, the scenery streaking past them is wintery woodlands. Snow snags their cheeks and snips little scratches into them.

"No, no, I'm not like you! I could die! Really!" Lavi twists in his arms, bowling over in giddy overstimulation.

"Liar." Kanda follows him down into the bend, holding them steady.

"Get us down, you psychotic asshole!"

Kanda complies, putting weight on Lavi's body to urge him to ignore survival instinct and step forward. Following his lead, Lavi jumps with him, giving an involuntary shriek as the slipstream slams into them. Then they're both stumbling onto the platform, and Kanda sleekly drops Lavi while keeping his own footing, like he knew he would.

"You've got a fucking deathwish!" he gasps as soon as he comes to a complete stop. He is in complete disarray, eyepatch crooked, hairband askew. But the way his hair has been swept behind clear away from his face gives him a clean look as he beams.

"You bring that out in me." Kanda retorts crisply.

"Now who's the liar?" Lavi hops up and dashes past him into the train compartment. "Gawd, I'm frozen!" he complains. Kanda follows him.

That night she doesn't go away.

Usually Kanda has to settle for lightning fast glimpses of her. Then she leaves no trace other than that same yearning that exhausts him with its permanence.

The floor of Kanda's room has become a dense mat of lotus flowers and their leaves. She is in their midst like always. Most of the time she's a hopeful revenant. Her faith in him is blinding. It's in her smile, in the hand she will patiently extend to him until the end of time. It leaves him aching to let her know that he's been waiting for her too and just as long. He wants to find her and end it for both of them.

But lately, like now, she lingers. He actually sees her hand drop and it's as bad as the times he sees her dying as she sleeps in the water. Sometimes he thinks in panic that this means she's died—and then he gets confused remembering that he slept in the water until he was born.

In these times, the feel of her slips from a pleasant fever dream into a haunting. It is, inexplicably, getting closer to what he feels about Alma. A yes, no, horrible mixed bag of things he doesn't understand and are beyond his control.

She shimmers at the foot of his bed, washed out in defeat. It's his fault. He's pushing her away. It's getting to be too much. But no, he hasn't. He can't. He doesn't want to.

Leave. No, stay with me forever. He wants to beg both of her simultaneously.

Lavi is sleeping in his own room somewhere in the castle. They'll see each other tomorrow. So that's what that's like. Expecting someone who will actually show up. Kanda grits his teeth, draws himself up in his bed, and it becomes that too. Waiting for the morning to come. Waiting for Lavi.

Lavi is not in bed. He's in Komui's office.

Recently some of those people who have been watching Kanda his whole life had sighed over steepled fingers,

"Couldn't he have done better than a Bookman?"

So Komui smoothes down the only wartime picture of Kanda by the corners. Little Kanda has shoulder-length black hair and looks more like a child-version of Lenalee than he does of himself. He and Alma stand the front, being the shortest and also the ones being shown off.

The whole thing is very formal. They wear the near-indestructible jackets and tights engineered for the nuclear free-for-all that was second exorcist training. All the adults are in their lab coats. No one smiles. It was probably intended as a promotional picture to circulate once they could declare the project a success. With the mess Kanda and Alma made of the North American facility, this is likely the last copy.

Kanda might wonder if there is a picture of him and the woman somewhere. The short answer is no, because cameras weren't invented yet. Komui hadn't even been alive then. But Kanda will continue to wonder, all the same.

And then, there's Lavi. Yet another one of his problem cases. Komui feels like he has a million of them. And there's what feels like a million pictures of Lavi. They're candid shots in the worst way. He jumps uninvited into the scenes of other people. Finders, exorcists, and scientists are all wide eyed and spooked to have Lavi clumsily land in the middle of their meals, card games, training sessions, experiments. Lavi always flashes a cheeky grin at the viewer while everyone else ogles him in alarm.

Most people are a little camera-shy. Not Lavi. Komui is a little surprised at this. Photography is a somewhat new and definitely very Western notion. Lavi has encountered enough cultures to appreciate how many of them still fear the camera stealing their souls. And yet there are a thousand versions of his face on Komui's desk, sassing him. Brave boy. But maybe he just thinks you shouldn't fear losing something you don't have.

War pictures. Because they're part of a history people know is important to record even as it unfolds. Because you don't know how much time is left. Because you don't want to be forgotten.

Lavi sits before him, silent and uncooperative.

It's a new age, Komui thinks blandly at him. Bookmen won't be the masters of recordkeeping for much longer. Look at what we've managed without you so much as noticing. A venerated hundreds-year old tradition of keeping secrets, down the drain.

It's nobody's fault. Progress never is.

The newest pictures on his desk are the absolute latest in surveillance product. Though taken in wartime, they are not war pictures. They document nothing and the whole point of them is to show things that would be better off not remembered. He is ashamed of them, but as the Vatican pointed out, spying on their soldiers is nothing new. Might as well use the newest technology to do it right, if it's got to be done anyways.

It's not that obvious. In the pictures, Kanda and Lavi tussle clumsily, elbows hitting noses. In some, they're just talking, but in others (more of them), they're arguing. Whatever they're up to, it doesn't look easy. But in a few, they're blended into one uncomplicated shape in one of the more secluded archways of the Order.

"What exactly are you accusing me of?" Lavi asks coldly in a preemptive strike.

Komui sighs.

"Lavi, I'm going to pay you the compliment of being direct. I may be following the Vatican's orders on this, but it's what I think too. It's a very, very bad idea for you two to get any closer. You and Kanda both have very complicated pasts. You both have very uncertain futures."

"You say that like it isn't true of all of us." Lavi laughs lightly. The look he gives Komui is far too calm. He's used to subjects of hard and heavy consequence, like wars and needing to handle their possible key figures (e.g. Kanda) with a delicate hand. He thinks he can still spin this right if he's careful.

Komui almost smiles in desperation because Lavi is such an idiot savant he can't even recognize simple relationship advice when he hears it. He's practically forcing Komui's hand.

This comes in a manila folder so thickly stamped with "CONFIDENTIAL" that the cover might as well be red. Lavi eyes it with misgiving.

"What's this?"

"It goes without saying that we are sharing this with you in the strictest confidence. We have faith in your ability to keep secrets…even from Bookman. But beyond that, I think you'll be discreet for Kanda's sake. And for everyone else in the Order, whatever that's worth."

It takes a while even with Lavi's speed-reading, but Komui waits in respectful silence. He watches Lavi's face, and at the right time he wearily rises to go around the desk to lay a hand on his shoulder.

When Lavi hits the pictures (Kanda and Alma trying to synchronize with their innocence, Kanda after his fight with Alma, Alma now), he retches. Komui gives him his wastebacket and tries not to attach any special meaning to it. Everyone does the same thing, after all.

But he can't help flinching at Lavi's expression when he resurfaces, running the back of his hand across his mouth. His eyes are bright with the refusal to cry, but what's left is uncomfortably close to hatred.

Lavi thinks there's no way around his limited time in their lives slipping away like the sands of an hourglass. That's his business. And Lavi doesn't know it, but Komui's is to keep this secret for him. He does it so the Vatican doesn't hurt him like it hurt Lenalee. He'd do it for any of his exorcists.

But just as well as Komui knows this, he knows that Kanda is already an old minefield littered with live charges. He's beyond hope. Lavi wandering into him, not knowing what's buried in his past, is like to blow him and the rest of them up. And that's something none of them need, especially with the thirds program up and running.

There's no helping this. There's no way for this to turn out right.

So he just keeps his hand on Lavi's shoulder.

Several hours later, Bookman rudely jolts out of a sound sleep to his apprentice prodding him insistently. The boy is the color of cream and there are strange, tiny cuts on his face. He has a book in his hands.

"What is it? Why are you waking me at this hour?"

"I need to leave tonight. I'm going to this village." Lavi hurriedly flips through the pages to the right place and points. Squinting, Bookman's eyes follow Lavi's finger to where it rests on the page.

"But why? What is this village? Why does it matter?"

"I think…" He says cautiously, willing himself to be good enough. Better than Bookman, in convincing people that he is someone else—"I think it has something to do with the third exorcists. And Kanda's lotus."

Non-Roman letters interweave with lotuses blooming across a page. Like an after- thought, the etching of a village nestles between the stalks.

"They grew lotuses there forty years ago. They don't grow them any more."

Understanding dawns upon Bookman and he quietly allows himself to be proud. Proud and exasperated. Kanda's case has been always exceedingly difficult to crack. Up until know, all they've gotten to is that there is a figure in his past that seems to be at the root of everything.

So this is what Lavi's supposedly secret comings and goings with the cursed Japanese exorcist will come to. Bookman is under no illusions, Lavi is skirting dangerously close to the edge—this might very well damage his apprentice in a way that will take an annoyingly long time to fix after they leave this place. But he's not so arrogant to discount information just because it comes at a personal price.

So he says simply, "Good. Good work. This might be a major breakthrough. You've managed to get somewhere with the boy after all, I see."

"No." he says quickly. Bookman gives him a look.

"No, this is something I figured out on my own." He lies.

And Bookman lets him.

By the time the birds are stirring to announce a faint lightening of the sky, Lavi is almost out the door. It's been a while since he's played the nomad, in the style of a large pack on his back. But there's such bulk that he doesn't see who grabs him from behind, and the shock nearly kills him.

"Lavi? Where are you going?"

Whirling around nearly unbalances him. There's Kanda, in a not-quite-rare state of undress. He always seems to be running around half-naked or half-dressed only in bandages. For someone who hates uninvited attention, he sure is a provocateur.

But it looks like he leapt out of bed, and his incredibly coincidental timing throws Lavi off.

"Yuu…Kanda. What are you doing up?"

Lavi still vacillates between the two options when they're alone together. And Kanda still hasn't decided which one he should use.

"Couldn't sleep." His gaze is sharp as it drifts towards Lavi's bag. He hasn't even attempted sleep, to Lavi's misfortune. If he were a little more muddled, Lavi might have been able to slip away with an excuse. The awkward, fumbling words he hasn't quite planned, to do with the girl, and how he vaguely sought Lavi to wash out her aftertaste, and how despite that he would sooner die than tell Lavi about her, fade away.

Lavi's not going on a mission. They generally observe office hours around here, unless it's a dire emergency. Too bad for him, it looks like a spot of Lavi's crisis has cropped up just as he was having a moment of his own.

"I just…have to go for a while. Not sure when I'll be coming back, but, you know. I'll see you when I do." Lavi says, which tells him about as much as nothing. The energy between them is incredibly uncomfortable. Kanda looks at him as if he sprouted two heads. Less than 24 hours ago, Lavi would have never gone away on a trip of indefinite length without at least making some clumsy attempt to say goodbye. Kanda's not sure Lavi from 24 hours ago would have agreed to go at all, if it has to do with what he thinks he does.

So, cautiously, he ventures, "Is it for Bookman?"

Lavi gives him a big soppy smile. It's common fodder for him, but only around everyone else. Ever since they came back from India he doesn't do it with Kanda. It was nice.

"I know you're not going to believe this, but I never do anything for anyone else—it's for me."

"But you hate it. You said so."

"So I did. Well, I can't take back what's past. So?"

"So, don't go." Kanda answers, too bewildered to be angry like he should be. The whole thing is surreal. He feels like he's in a fugue state. Maybe he is. In this very grounding moment of Lavi about to escape in the wilds without explanation, it's like the past few hours didn't even happen. No Lavi excitedly clutching his arms as they teetered together through a snowstorm on the top of a train. No the girl gracing his bedroom like an addiction he can't kick, Nothing. Things aren't connecting. Lavi is just matter-of-factly going into a vanishing act.

Somewhat unconsciously, he reaches over to put his hand on Lavi's arm. Maybe just to put things on pause, keep him from running out too quick. Lavi does something he never has before, and violently jerks away.

It makes things worse. The tension is even weirder as Kanda valiantly bulldozes through the scene to its end.

"Why do you go if you hate it?"

"Oh, stop it." Lavi mocks him lightly. "If I do, I do, and if I go, I go. Why are you doing this, anyways?"

"…Do you really want me to say it?"

"No. Because you don't." Lavi says immediately and indifferently.

The girl appears in his mind's eye this time, about a thousand times more beautiful than Lavi in an objective way. She is golden, and white light, and at least straightforward. She's waiting for him. That's it. She's been with him as long as he's been alive, and Lavi is what? Kind of the creepy kid he didn't meet too long ago, to be honest. And he had to learn to like him, against his better judgment.

Ugh, not Alma again.

So Lavi may have a point. But then again, there he is with the tiny red nicks from the ice in the storm on his cheeks. Kanda's has already healed over.

"Maybe I do," Kanda says anyways. Just for the sake of argument.

Lavi once told him that Bookman gave him the nickname "heartless" because for all the wars and their atrocities he's witnessed, he's always blamed rather than pitied people for their suffering. Prodigious for a Bookman. A little odd for one of Lavi's age. He's come to hate it. But Kanda never really saw it before now, with Lavi laughing away.

"Well, don't then," he says, turning his back on Kanda and sweeping himself off to the great unknown.

Kanda is stunned.

Six

Sometime around the present.

When Alma resurrects, he's ugly. Not surprising, considering that he's technically a dismembered cadaver held together by stitches and a toxic infusion of the Earl's egg nonsense. It's not unlike taking in the horror of Frankenstein's monster when it animates, and everyone gapes aghast.

But with simple will, Alma scours this all off like a layer of rust. He walks forward clean and shining, hard-edged. He even has sharps coming off of him, like a devil's tail. Somewhere in the background, Allen Walker does his stupid-wahing wahing routine. Kanda ignores him as usual, and Alma has eyes only for Kanda.

Alma could probably take on any form he likes, but he wants to look like the boy Kanda killed. He goes right up to Kanda, slightly on tip-toe like he used to. He smiles. Cheerful, sunny Alma. He was always smiling, when they were little. The dementia in it is new, though.

Less than an hour later Allen Walker is once again the selfless hero that everyone who matters can't help but owe. He got Kanda in end. Alma is like a child again, crying out in frustration. Once again, how very little life has given him. But even as Alma's fingers dissolve into sand, they grasp at what he does have.

Kanda.

Kanda gathers him up in his arms, precious cargo of his best friend and his true love's soul and everything that has truly mattered to him. The bundle is alarmingly light, but it helps, not being weighed down, when Kanda throws himself through the portal to Mater Allen opened for him.

Somewhere else in the world, Lavi is being bound by the Noah. But Kanda won't know that for a while.

Lavi had predicted that Kanda would never amount to much because of his fixation on Alma and his ghostly woman lover. And he was right, because right now, Lavi is completely gone from Kanda's thoughts. As part of the Order, Lavi goes in the discard pile. All he can see is Alma and the girl curled up inside him like a butterfly drying out and dying in its chrysalis. He doesn't return for a very long time.

Seven

A little later

One day he has Allen restrained until the gray recedes. When it is only a little flush on the tip of his nose, Allen suddenly says from within the ropes, "What will you do now, Kanda?"

"What?"

The Beansprout squirms. In the corner, Johnny Gill snores because there's nothing he could have done if the fourteenth woke up anyways.

"I mean…whatever happens to me, it's going to be over one day. This business with the fourteenth. Then what will you do?"

Kanda frowns. "What are you talking about, idiot? There's a holy war going with the akuma and the Earl, do you think we're going to sign a paper and it'll be 'okay, I won't kill your guys anymore!'"

"But you don't care about the Order. You're a General, but that's only because you want to help me. I fought so hard for your freedom, Kanda. What are you going to do with it with the part you still have?"

Mourn forever, Kanda thinks. The memories come in jogs and stutters. Little Alma reciting from his book, dancing around the edges of the pools so his feet won't fall asleep from the cold hard stone. Grown-up Alma in the grotesque, so powerful and resentful, and then eroded and dying again in his arms. That beautiful woman he loved, promising she would wait, a thousand times.

And she did wait. But all she did was take Alma away with her into a field of fully open lotuses.

Then there's the fastest flicker, the image of Lavi on one of his better days. The best day. Red hair, limned in light, laughing.

He has no idea where Lavi is. Gone, which is all Lavi probably wants him to know about it.

But that's gone in a flash and he answers Allen,

"Why are you always so hung up on these things? Don't you have bigger problems to worry about than these little kid questions?

Allen grins and his skin is back to normal with a little rosiness in his cheeks. He's always happy when he's successfully fought off the change again. Kanda still has to keep him bound for a while longer. The fourteenth can be very tricky. But Allen can talk.

"That's the part of me that's still 'Allen'."

He's quiet for a moment, and then pipes up again

"Do you miss him?" he asks quietly.

Kanda glances at him. Doesn't Allen deserve it?

"Of course I do."

Allen nods. He adds too casually, "I miss everyone at the Order. But, Lenalee was the one I saw last, and the one who went after me…I think about her the most."

Kanda look away at the catch in Allen's voice because that's what he'd want himself. But Allen shows no embarrassment. He keeps his head down as if he could drift off to sleep in his chair now that his struggle is over for the night and he can end it on a better note: the one of good memories.

"She's waiting for me. I know everybody is, but especially her. I feel bad, making her wait. But it makes me feel better, knowing she is. Isn't that crazy?"

Wordlessly, Kanda crosses the room and puts his hand on top of Allen's bowed head, ruffling his hair.

"Someone waiting for you when you don't know if you'll ever be able to go back to them… Is it easier when no one's waiting for you? Kanda, you tell me…"

"Go to sleep, stupid Beansprout…"

He sits up with him until Allen can sleep.

When Kanda finally returns to base, he's greeted by something of a riddle. He's stopped three times. Once by a man who gives him two things, once by girl who takes one away, and once by a man who gives him one thing and takes another.

To start with, Komui doesn't summon him to his office because it's Kanda that has the high ground now. It's only common decency that they show him some humility for their crimes against him. No one else will, so Komui does. So when Kanda is let in through their very officious front gate with all the fortifications to keep akuma and Noah and fallen exorcists out, Komui is standing in the doorway alone. He bows deeply.

His newest General looks to the side, displeased with the ceremony even though he feels it owed. Komui draws a picture out of his labcoat.

Kanda takes it and his heart clenches a little. It's the one of him, Alma, and the second exorcist research team. He remembers this picture. It technically wasn't that long ago, and it had been like a brochure for his and Alma's existence. The researchers had waved it all over the place.

He'd used to think of it as bland and pointless, like those class photographs with rows of students and their teacher to the side. The kind where everyone is expressionless, and no one thinks is interesting except for those with the dull business of being related to those pictured. But for the first time, he recognizes that Edgar and Twi Chan have a certain look about them. They are once subtly tired, happy, and anxious even in their neutral default. They have the look of parents.

Meanwhile, Alma's face is blank because they were told not to smile. At the time he was probably feeling a little empty. That was when Kanda was still constantly trying to murder him because he found that a better prospect than being his friend. But Kanda doesn't feel like this is a sad thing any more. That face will fill with a love that had 30 years to grow before Alma was even born. There may have been 10 complicated years following that, but the having the one day—the last day—was worth it.

It's stupid, but since he's let Allen get away with it of all people, he doesn't give Komui any trouble about seeing him with the start of tears.

This whole time Komui's hand has been resting heavily on top his other pocket. He jimmies his leg in unease, hesitating. It seems like Kanda can't take his eyes off the first picture, so maybe it's enough. Maybe he doesn't need the other one.

But this isn't just for Kanda. So Komui slowly pulls it out and hands it over.

Kanda can't think of what it might be, so his face contorts in slight annoyance over being interrupted from taking in Alma. But if the first picture made his heart clench, the second stops it entirely. His head snaps up sharply from shock, but Komui's snaps down just as sharply in another bow of deep, deep regret. Komui can't even face him.

Kanda has his arm draped along the backrest of the plush red velvet seat. Mugen is propped up in his other arm, his hand idle on the blade in its sheath to casually hold it up. His head lists to the side with his eyes closed, but he isn't sleeping; he's just bored.

Lavi is in front of Kanda's arm resting on the seat, sitting pulled up the edge of the bench. Lavi's bored too. He has a book open and the fist he has pressed up to his cheek says that he desperately wants to be taken out of what he's doing. That was right before Kanda took him onto the roof of the train.

Kanda's never seen a picture of the two of them before. And he catches what Lavi missed in Komui's office. Even though they're not doing anything- they're not facing each other, they're not talking, they're not even touching—the two people in this photograph are together.

Kanda holds this picture in his hand, over the one of him and Alma as children. Lavi. He lowers his eyes. He can't smile or cry to this one. He doesn't know what to say.

Komui doesn't either. He never voices a spoken apology. Kanda tucks the photos into his jacket, and leaves him in the hall with his head still bowed

He gets a turn when he opens the door to Lavi's room and finds Lenalee on her knees crying over his things. She holds her face in her hands, poised over some of his clothes, a notebook, and pens arranged like a shrine on the floor. At the sound of her arrival she drops her hands quickly and presses wet handprints into his scarf. Pens clatter to the side.

"Oh, hello!" she says, mutually surprised. "I'm sorry."

The last time he caught a woman off guard with her tears was when Allen forced everyone to behold Alma's agonized soul. His reaction is fairly similar. His brain supplies the instant sage opinion that he can't handle this either. His feet backpedal immediately.

"Oh no, no, I'm sorry, don't go!" she protests earnestly. She jumps up, "I'm sorry— " (why does she keep apologizing?) "—I wanted to be sad tonight, for Lavi. You were his friend too. Is that why you came?"

He looks at her and doesn't mean to let her go unanswered, but her lower lip trembles and she catches herself with the murmur,

"Oh, I didn't mean to say 'were'"

She rights herself, and her posture is straight, tall, and proud. She's been a weepy mess on and off ever since he met her, but she's always been able to do that too. Switch back to being a fighter, a strong one, at the drop of a hat. She clasps her hands and bows her head, like he brother. It looks more like a comrade keeping vigil at the funeral pyre than a young girl moping.

"I wish I had done better with him. You know, in the past. That's all. That's what I think about, sometimes."

Kanda is quiet for a moment, and without overanalyzing what he owes Allen or whatever he thinks about Lavi, he interjects,

"How about Allen? Do you think about him?"

Lenalee swivels about and faces him, deeply aggrieved.

"Of course I do. And I thought about you, too! While you were all away, I thought, I could have done better with all of them."

She throws her hands up in exasperation, at herself and the three young men who bedevil her so.

"First Lavi and Bookmen were taken by the Noah. Then you disappeared with Alma. Then Allen ran away on his own. So I worked backwards. When Allen hugged me but wouldn't stay, I wanted to sink into the Earth and disappear forever. But he made me promise to understand that he's OK and still fighting on his own. I…I had to, so it brought me back. Then I was sad about you, but I knew you were free, one way or another. I was just sorry about not seeing your pain earlier. But, Lavi…" and she can't go on.

"What about him?" Kanda prompts her.

Her ever-evolving hairstyle is a shower of mismatched bunches as she shakes her head in despair. "Oh Kanda, you should know even better than I do, because you've been doing this even longer than I have, haven't you? You and Allen had unconfirmed status. There's hope in that. But it's different for someone in enemy hands."

She bites her lip and glances away again. She can't face him either.

"If you catch yourself waiting too long for someone, he's probably not coming back."

He watches the proud soldier go away again and the worst in her reassert itself. Her back slackens and fingertips going up to her eyes again.

It's out of character for her to do this to him. But maybe she's entitled to some payback, after all they've put her through these past few months. That's fair.

He goes back at nightfall to ensure that Lenalee's cleared out. He expects nothing but the dismal little sorrow's nest she built of his things on the floor. It's there, blue and lumpish in the dark. But so is Bookman.

The little old man has a little wear and tear around the edges, like binding of a slightly used book. Kanda is not the shouting type but Bookman holds up a hand to silence him anyways. To everyone else, he's not here.

And so it comes out that Bookman is the hateful old bag of dust Kanda always thought he was. Kanda could be more sympathetic because he certainly knows what it's like to have everything good in him scraped away until only the monstrous dredge is left. But he's not. Kanda has never liked him, and in that time when he and Lavi had been on interesting terms, he'd had no qualms with wanting the decrepit man dead and out of the way.

Bookman treasures stacks of tedious papers with no readership more than someone who has literally given him his life.

And this wouldn't bother Kanda in principle, except that he never forgives those who take from him. If Bookman had been better at his job he would have realized it.

But maybe Bookman still has a scrap of humanity that seeks a sliver of redemption. Kanda won't give it to him, but it's the only thing that likely saves him from an impromptu execution atop his old apprentice's left-behind belongings.

He takes something out of his bag and turns it over to Kanda. Unsurprisingly, since it's Bookman, it's a book. No, more of a sheaf. A stack of papers dimpled from the pressure of handwritten words.

On his way out, he finally concedes to his attachment, or at least his guilt about the boy. Because before he can leave, he has to know. He asks Kanda,

"You'll go to him, won't you?"

Author's notes:

Tired…Thoughts all over the place…


	3. Chapter 3

Eight

Transcribed from eye-witness accounts. Final draft, editing in progress. On indefinite hiatus.

Lavi fully intended to give it a proper title, but he couldn't think of one straight off. So just in case, he wrote "missed train, India" on the cover. No one else would snoop over something that bland, and Kanda would be able to figure it out.

Lavi started it, "Once upon a time," but scratched this out and started over.

Forty years ago, there was a village that stood next to vast fields of lotus flowers of the deepest pink hue. The fields stretched so far in every direction that to stand in the center was like being in the middle of the sea, eyes fruitlessly searching for land in any direction.

It was very beautiful. When the blooms were in season, they were like an endless fleet of lanterns on stalks, set afloat on the clearest waters that would reflect the sky. Every breath filled the lungs with their perfume. The lush green leaves were like buoys everywhere, protecting them from sinking. When the sun set on them, it was like seeing a cloud carpet strewn with flowers, like a path a goddess had laid to guide her mortal lover into the heavens.

Despite of this, villagers did not find them beautiful. The village was very poor, and grew the lotuses only for their livelihood. Buyers would come and take them away for a pittance. Later, rich people in cities would pay exorbitant sums to lay the flowers on their altars, and nibble on the roots and seeds in the most delicate dishes.

Meanwhile in the village, mothers hit their babies for picking up and rattling the dried seed pods, which were for sale, not for play. Before they could talk, children joined their parents at work in the fields. Every day was exhausting and numbing. They cut rhizomes for new plantings in the spring, cut blooms for the flower stalls in the summer, and cut roots and seed heads for the food market in the fall. Their hands and feet would bloat with water like sponges, never completely dry. The smooth-skinned beauty of their youth was fleeting, for the low-growing plants offered no shade from the relentless sun.

By the time a man looked upon his new bride and a woman looked upon her new groom, they were disappointed by each other's cragginess, earned in labor to the lotus.

So it had been for hundreds of years. Not a single white-haired soul would turn its head on its thin pillow without thinking "I hate the lotus…"

One day in the summer, the season for harvesting flowers, two strangers came into the village. They wore black uniforms and called themselves exorcists of the Black Order. The villagers did not know it, but there was a single lotus in their fields that would open and close in a fluttery dance under the full moon, and each one of its seeds would grant immense power if eaten.

When the strangers asked if they knew of an unusual flower in their fields, the leaders of the harvest scratched their heads. Lotuses were just lotuses. When they asked how long it would take to check each one, they laughed and waved a hand towards the fields, the gesture implying thousands, millions.

Exchanging looks, the man and woman asked if they could stay and help with the harvest until they found what they were looking for. And because their mission added a rosy tint of mystery to their dull lives, the villagers agreed.

The man was dark-eyed and dark-haired and slightly ill mannered, but very handsome. He changed out of the heavy, long coat he arrived in into the lighter cotton garments of the field workers. The girls giggled at his broad back and shoulders, but this only made him confused and surly.

Even in the fields, he carried two blades. They never saw him draw, so they never knew what his skill was with them. But it was soon clear that he was very strong. He would lift cut lotuses in tubs heavier than himself onto wagons. He never tired. He stubbornly claimed this job for his own and would let no one else take on the back-creaking chore.

Every night the men tried to express their gratitude, and perhaps tease him, by pressing home-brewed liquor on him that would melt guts of iron. But he would drink them dry and stay as sober and ornery as a mule.

The woman was very beautiful, but slender and slight. She insisted that she was hardy enough to work in the fields, but she worried them, so they gave her the lightest work of mending clothes and watching babies. The flaxen hair of her bowed head would shine as she looked down at her needlework. She was a terrible seamstress but out of politeness they never told her so.

Her uniform was stark black like her partner's, but it was such a pretty half-jacket and full-length dress that she always had an air of elegance about her when she went about the village. She would fetch water or tinder, singing light-heartedly in a voice that made the village children wander up to her and put their hands over her mouth.

She was also a healer, like a shaman. One day the other exorcist cut himself with a careless swipe of scythe. He bore his injury bullishly and the men carried him back from the fields.

Their eyes all glowed with fascination as she passed her staff over the gash and it sealed like mud closing over a footprint. But they also noticed they way her hands lingered over his skin. They saw how he watched her, his scowl softening until his expression became a lonely one, since she would not look up from her work.

And so villagers knew that the two exorcists were in love with each other.

What puzzled them was that they did not seem to want to marry. They were often seen laughing together, with him helping her carry something or her giving him a treat she had made. But if it went on too long they would turn their faces away from each other and go their separate ways.

The man became instantly sullen and unpleasant if anyone asked him about it. But the woman kindly reassured them they need not worry for them, as it was merely due to the their jobs as exorcists. They had good lives, and lived with the rest of their comrades in a faraway castle.

The villagers did not understand this very well. What kind of work left two people young and beautiful, madly in love, and forbidden to be together?

"Because if something happened to either of us, the other would fall," the beautiful young woman tried to explain another way, but this made no impression. They were only upset to see the sadness in her pale blue eyes, so the women comforted her by pressing freshly baked bread and their children into her arms.

She loved flowers, so one day after the work was done and all the field workers were back in their homes for dinner, he brought her the most beautiful blooms of the day. She buried her face in them to hide her blush, to the amusement of the other women working alongside her.

A fireball crashed into the side of the house and knocked them all hard to the ground. The woman was the first to scramble to her feet, her grip lost on all the lotuses except one. Flying to the door, she threw it open and cried out in anguish, "Akuma!" although this meant nothing to anyone except the man. The flower left in her hand, once no different from the rest, started to hum and glow a violent green. Screams erupted around the village.

She exchanged one fleeting look with the man, then snatched up her staff and ran off in a whirl of skirts. Her friends protested and wailed, begging to know where she was going.

The man said calmly, "She's going to draw them away from the village. We'll fight them in the fields." The women shrieked as the two blades fell into his hands and burst into green fire.

Seeing their distress, he said, "Don't worry, we came here to protect you." They saw him smile for the first time since he had come to the village, and then he too was gone. When the women ran outside the only thing to see was pentacles swarming up their walls like cockroaches.

For the next part, Lavi only wrote,

"No one knew what was happening. They were being attacked by bulbous puppets made of bits of flesh and metal, the ugliest things they had ever seen. Those that tried to run were shot by their cannons, and disintegrated into gusts of stars and ash. Some glimpsed the woman running towards the fields. The creatures seemed to be drawn to her, and would abandon whatever they had been destroying to follow her. The man killed off the monsters that lingered in the village before going after her.

The most terrible explosions rocked the walls of their houses, so they understood that the man and the woman were fighting in the fields. They grasped each other's hands, safe within their walls, and prayed fervently for them to win. When the night eventually fell silent, they allowed themselves to be hopeful and looked to the fields. But they saw that everything, even the water, was in flames.

Not long after, they heard him calling for her."

No one saw this next part. But this was what Lavi correctly guessed to be what happened. He did not write it down.

The man ran to the fields, hundreds of akuma streaking ahead of him in pursuit of the girl and her prize. He cut down those he overtook, and back in the village they could feel the impact of their bodies slamming into the earth. The enemies he defeated splashed down into the water, and soaked him by the time he reached her.

He saw her facing the biggest akuma, a hideous thing made of sharp metal plates and oozing sores. It floated above her, avoiding the illuminated point of her staff.

As the man got closer to them, it drew itself up. The spikes on its back shot out like javelins. It caught the man in the chest and brought him to his knees.

She saw this and screamed. She immediately thrust her hands up to the akuma, and her meaning was clear: No, no, don't kill him, take it, take mine!

The lead akuma swooped down to size the innocence she was offering—the lotus in her fist. Before its claw could close over it, the seed head whistled like a hot kettle, and then the petals flew off in a burst.

The rest of the akuma responded by falling upon the man like wolves.

She screamed his name.

She gasped as her staff splintered into pieces in her other hand. Splitting into thousands of vicious ribbons, they lit upon the akuma and torched it and the others into blazing infernos. The streaks of her innocence then converged on her like a flurry of arrows. One lashed out from the rest and speared the man, throwing him far across the field.

She collapsed out of sight, slipping into the black water below the waxy leaves and pink flowers.

Elsewhere, the man floated on his back with blooms and leaves coolly kissing his face. He clutched at the shard of her innocence and the poisonous akuma bone embedded in his heart.

Lavi continued to write,

All through the day and all through the night, they heard him calling to her, crying like a calf for its mother.

The villagers hid in their homes, waiting for the water to stop burning. Some of the of the bravest men climbed up the roofs to see what was happening. They came back with black liquid spilling out of their eyes, leaving cat-like streaks on their faces. The fields were covered with stars like the spots of a disease, and fire smoldered in glowing red veins like lava. They could not see anything of the young man past the smoke clouds hovering over the fields, but it was agony to have to sit and listen to him calling the woman's name. They all did so anyways.

The next day the men climbed up on the roofs again. The day was clear and sunny, the sky a perfect blue. The fires had died down, boiling away all the water the lotuses grew in. All about them was waste, strange heaps of wreckage made of almost-human appendages and cooking metal. A sickly smell like rotten flesh steamed out of the ground burned black and bare.

But to their amazement, there was a cluster of lotuses growing at a distance, pure and untouched. They stared in wonder as the flowers peaked upwards in a mound like a hand reaching for the sky. Then, a barely perceptible outgrowth appeared in the side of the mass, spiking in the direction of the man's voice. A lotus bloomed, and then, a little while later, another. They fell into line like pearls on a single strand. The men on the roofs shouted for joy and slapped their hands on the tiles to alert those below. Muffled cheers burst forth from within the walls of the houses.

They dared not go into the fields because they feared the toxic stars, so they were gladdened to soon see men and women in black uniforms coming in from the distance. They shouted and waved at them excitedly, pointing. At first, they wondered why the newcomers stayed where they were, making no reply but quietly keeping watch from the edges of the field.

Soon enough, they realized that they did not mean to help.

The words of the woman came back to them: "…if something happened to either of us, the other would fall".

And they knew that the lovers had lost their value to the ones they had called their comrades.

On the third day, the lotuses slowed, as if their life force were weakening. They stopped spreading on the fourth. On the fifth day, he fell silent. On the sixth day, the last of the stars faded from the earth and the new exorcists in their formidable black coats entered the fields. They tore apart the lotuses, and took them back.

Money arrived from the Black Order. It was to pay for the scorched fields, and, it was insinuated, their silence. The village used it to start a new trade in painted pottery. Patterns of thick lotus leaves and dainty pink lotus flowers flowed from the tips of their brushes.

They held each other and their children tighter. Years passed, and it became a delight to behold the radiant, smooth-skinned beauty of their newest sons and daughters at their weddings.

Among vast seas of fallow mud they now gather clay from, there is one last patch where lotuses still grow. They tend to it devotedly. Older villagers often visit to give thanks. Younger lovers go to receive their blessing. Thirty years later, they still weep for the two fallen lovers.

Now they can see the beauty of the lotus.

Lavi had meant to bind it in leather and finish it with the simple dedication of "For Kanda". He meant to inscribe it on the inside cover by when he got back.

He never came back, so Kanda reads it as a string-and-paper manuscript in Lavi's room. He drops it to the floor and covers his face with his hand.

Lavi is not here.

Author's notes: Thank you all for the wonderful feedback so far. One more section to go.


	4. Chapter 4

Nine

A few days after a few months ago

The handle of a rake cracks down on his shoulder. It's not enough to hurt Lavi, who has been in a soldier's peak condition for the past two years, but the aggression is clear. He grabs it and twists, but the person at the other end holds on.

It's a woman from the village. He recognizes her as one of the crowd that threw stones at him as if he was a crop pest bird. Her hands are wet and shiny with recent pottery work, although some of the clay has dried in patches and is flaking off her capable-looking arms. She looks about forty and fifty, ironically just about the right age to be Lavi's mother and beating a no-good son about the head. Lavi quickly does some calculations in his head, and yes, she might be old enough to have been alive as a child when it happened.

"Get out of here!" she screams at him. "Haven't you people done enough to them!"

"I just—" Lavi tries to explain, but she angrily discards the rake by throwing it to the side, carrying him with it a little.

Her hand goes to the scythe at her belt. Lavi eyes it, unafraid but a little shaken. It has to be one of the few left in the village, for harvesting lotuses. She must be one of the lotus-tenders.

"Wait, I…I'm his friend! I'm trying to help him!"

The look she shoots him is so full of scorn it makes him duck involuntarily, in case she might take a swipe at him with the scythe after all

"He's dead!" she exclaims simply.

"No, he's not."

The woman blinks. Her slip-buttered hand comes up to brush the hair over her ear to side, as if it might help her hear him better. Gray water films in the webbing of the stray strands, tints the tip of her auricle. With her face softened, the warm hints of what must have been an impressive, long-lasting beauty in her youth shines through.

"Please." Lavi implores her steadily. "He's my friend."

Ten

A month after a few months ago.

"A response of flesh" the Noah says silkily. "Moisture. Heat. Friction. And there's this, with us, here."

Lavi gives a grunt, or maybe a sigh, as another something he can't see invades his body.

"Your face is complaining that this isn't the same; that this is pain. But maybe it is. And maybe it's more. Is this perhaps the most you've ever felt from another person?"

Black hair falling on his wrist, massaging sword-calloused fingertips in his own, one arm curling around his neck and the other around his waist—

A firecracker burst in one of his organs makes him double over and gag.

Okay, maybe.

But not yes, definitely. So. There's a small victory in that.

"It makes sense. We're Noah, so much more beyond humans, those things that leave Bookmen numb."

The words are breathy in his ear.

"What about _him_? Has he become 'that person' to you? He's important, you know. Not like you. Does the name, 'Alma Karma' mean anything to you?"

Lavi shakes his head vaguely, because the question is mostly rhetorical anyways. What he knows about Alma, it can't help or hurt him now.

"Just know that you will mean less than nothing to him, very soon."

Sheesh. These Noah are glad hands at physical torture, but for the mental event, it's a poor showing without Road.

"Anyways, isn't that what you're afraid of? That you'll be forgotten?"

It's a small satisfaction, but Lavi seizes it anyways. He laughs in their faces, lightly spritzing them in red. They pause, taking the opportunity to lick their bloodied fingers clean at this unexpected development.

"No," Lavi admits. It's a solace to him that the only truth he's going to give the Noah can't hurt anyone but himself.

"That's already happened, so I can't be afraid of it anymore."

As if to agree with him, one of them watching in the sidelines suddenly begins to sing. "No ones comin' for you boy," he opines in his best spaghetti Western tones.

Lavi sits with his head on his fist, hollow and blank-eyed at the slices of lotus-root. They look like chicarones or pinwheel cookies. Treats from the Americas.

Oh, who is he kidding? He doesn't need a metaphor. They're lotus roots and instantly recognizable. He always thought it was weird how the root is so fat for such a slender plant, and how closely it matches the porous seedhead.

"Eating the stuff of your curse? You're rather like a third, aren't you, Yuu Kanda?

Everyone stops eating and turns their head to stare at Lavi. Kanda included, the tempura pieces on his plate fried to perfection and artistically arranged by Jerry.

Lavi gets up and goes away, not even bothering to clear off his tray.

Lavi exits the cafeteria and he makes it down one corridor before he hears a scuffle behind a column like a mouse. A minute goes by with the tiny sound bouncing about the elevated ceiling. He waits for the source to reveal itself, and sure enough, Lenalee slips out as suddenly and charmingly as Alice tumbling out of the looking glass.

Her eyes are huge amber drops of reproach. Calling her out on it, he says,

"Well? What do you want, brown-eyes?"

"You shouldn't have said that."

Lavi stares at her feet instead of her face. Lenalee is prettier than all the princesses he's ever spied at a distance as their fathers' kingdoms are razed by the peasant masses. But it's tacky the way she pairs those innocence-anklets with black pumps.

"Kanda is always in a bad mood. He doesn't care what I say, this isn't going to make him any worse."

"No, I mean, that was wrong of you. Go back and apologize to Kanda."

"Why should I? That was nowhere near as bad as what he says on a daily basis to everyone else."

Why does Lenalee feel the need to go around shaming people for their shortcomings? Doesn't she think they know them already?

"Kanda's issues are Kanda's issues. That's different. Whatever happened with Kanda, that wasn't fair."

"Who says anything happened? Maybe I just think he should learn to take a little of what he dishes out."

"I know you, Lavi. Remember when we thought Allen died? Do you remember the horrible things you said to me? It's hard for you when people are hurting. You don't like how it makes you feel, so you punish them for it. I don't know what happened with Kanda," she repeats. "But whatever it was, you're not being fair."

Lavi turns his back to her, but lingers, ill-advisedly shooting back,

"If you think I'm such a heartless monster, then don't bother with me."

"It's because you have a heart that you feel that way! So now you're finding out that it's one thing to observe wars, and another to fight in them. You see pain in the people that fight alongside you, and people that you care about. It's hard! It makes you sad! Well, too bad. Grow up and get it together, Lavi!"

Damned child-soldiers, he thinks bitterly. Lenalee and Kanda both. Can't argue with their hard-won worldview. Can't outdo them in tragedy. What do the rest of them have that can possibly compare?

So he tells her, "Leave me alone, Lenalee."

He leaves her with fists clenched beside the single-tier ruffle she tries to pass off as a skirt.

"Lavi, you…idiot!" she calls after him.

It's Kanda who tries a gentler approach that night. He deftly turns aside Lavi's attitude from the past few months. He also doesn't mention Lavi's disappearance from the Order for a month that had Komui irate and in raucous disagreement with Bookman ("The boy is my apprentice first and your peon second," the old man had said crossly. "He'll be back when he's done with the business I sent him on, and not a minute sooner!")

"-It's not like taking a holiday for a few days. Who I am now, everything about me that has anything to do with you…it's going to be gone."

Kanda tugs Lavi's startled, stiff-as-a-board body into his embrace.

"You can come back," he says.

Something snarls in Lavi's brain.

It claws its way towards the truth about Kanda. At any second, if Kanda is properly motivated, what's inside his veins can burst him into a furious slurry of blades, feathers, and vengeance. There is a seed in him to turn him from the physical beauty he is into an unspeakable horror.

Like Alma. Be afraid, this image warns Lavi. Be careful. Alma is still alive, is the vessel of the only person Kanda's ever known he's truly loved, and the thirds program is leaving a dangerously detectable trail straight to him. You are smarter than this, the Bookman and raw human fear in him tell him. Don't get involved.

But this all drains away too easily to the memory of Yuu curled up on his side, eyes closed, and Lavi looking down at him and realizing, he's just lonely. That's all. He's just really lonely, and when he feels a little less lonely, he's not so horrible. It's also in the way that Kanda is holding him now, finally able to share some of the good in him that he's been hoarding for just one person for so long. He's kept it in for so long he might have thought it had gone bad. He might have been afraid it was no longer worth anything to anyone, but here Lavi is. Taking it.

And Lavi is able to think,

You don't understand. You want me to save you, but I'll be gone before you are. And you'll forget me. You'll go back to spending every moment of your broken existence agonizing over that person you love so much.

And in the first second you'll forget me.

Lavi shoves Kanda back.

"Stop. Just stop trying. It's useless" he spits out. He feels recklessly close to hatred for Kanda, for his lack of comprehension. For the utter lack of fury in his expression, which is still soft.

It's a close relative to the contempt he's had before watching humanity fail. It's a rush, like adrenaline, and it gives him what he needs to say the rest.

"Do you really think you're that special? Do you really think I care about what made you the bitter bastard you are? I already know. Sometimes bad things happen to people, and it ruins them. I see it all the time."

He's shaking. He should end it there. It's definitely enough. But he lets the cat out of the bag anyways. He's not sure why. Maybe he can't stand having it end with Kanda thinking this was all on him, and his Bookman woes. It was a two-way street.

"I know about her. I know that there's someone you've been looking for your whole life. You even killed a kid for her. So stop trying with me already. It's not going to change anything. You are never going to let that go."

The moment is kind of a blur. Lavi isn't conscious of looking at anything in particular. He probably meant to say, "So you have to let me go instead."

But when you get hurt, you go a little sideways trying to get even.

(Another way he's like Alma, not that either of them catch it this time.)

"I can't fix you. People like you, can't be fixed."

Later, when Lavi is under the Noah knife and he knows that he can't take anymore, is no longer part of anyone's story, even his own—he remembers how Kanda looked like when he said that.

So, on a related note. Lavi is gone for good. Good for Kanda.

Because who wants a person like him in their story anyways?

Eleven

?

2nd unknown date.

The Noah have officially adopted sleazy white loungewear as their uniform. There are a few guarding the door, smoking and playing cards, as beautiful and useless as peafowl in a menagerie. When they spot Kanda, he draws, but they only titter and flick their cigarettes at him, orange sparks sputtering between them.

"Hello!" one of them greets him happily. "We haven't seen you since Alma Karma's awakening. You're certainly looking well, weren't you two about to crumble to dust?"

Mugen slams down right onto an open palm. Under the blade in his grip, the Noah's perfect white-tooted grin gleams and teases.

"Whoa whoa whoa, why fight? This isn't like the big brou-ha-ha over your one true love and dead best friend and the fourteenth and all that mess!"

He throws the sword and Kanda at its end back, making him skid on his boots. He's ready to attack again, but in a move as smooth as a choreographed step, the Noah part like the Red Sea. The door swings on its hinges unaided, groaning heavily. One jabs his thumb over his shoulder at the open entryway.

"Go on in, we don't care. There's nothing important in there anymore," he invites Kanda in cheerfully.

"Then why are you all here?"

They all smile as a chorus and Kanda is stunned when they breeze to past him as casually as strangers in the street. Their parade slips by in a haze of tobacco scent and loose cards, and there is a voice next to him saying wistfully and absently,

"Don't you ever go back to a place where you've had good times?"

The room is pitch and at first, Kanda doesn't see it. Then he does. The bloodless, white arm hanging over cheap plywood siding.

They have given him a pauper's funeral.

Kanda leans over the open casket and the body is there. He's not cleaned, not arranged. There are signs for the beginnings of this, because the hands, head, and feet are unmarked, like they wanted to dress him for a public viewing.

But at some point they decided he wasn't worth it and the plan was abandoned, because he is scorched and scoured bloody everywhere else. There are places in his limbs that look poked in, like dents in overripe fruit. He's flipped over with his face resting to the side. What remains of his exorcist uniform barely hides his nudity.

Kanda looks down at him numbly. Reaching down, he slides a hand under the cheek and turns the face towards him. It's not like seeing Alma again for the first time, mutated beyond recognition. It is so obviously Lavi. The same features he's always had. Red hair. Cheekbones and lips and nose that would have sharpened a little more as he aged. Body as plain and unadorned with monstrous extras as it ever was. A mere human body.

It's this body that Kanda gently lifts and turns over, to take back.

"Yuu…" he suddenly gasps, making Kanda start. His eyes fly open, a piteous scrap of green in white skin and blackened wounds. The inside of his open mouth is as wet as a kitten's. Kanda is alarmed by the fresh cherry red spilling over the sides and down his chin.

Kanda rushes to pull Lavi up and support his neck with his harshly scarred forearm. He winces. The stigmata will scare him. He tries to make up for it by clearing the raggedy overgrown hair from Lavi's eyes. That wild green, like the leaves of a lotus field, that he'd almost forgotten—

"Lav—"

"Kanda…that woman you love, she—"

"She's dead. She died a long time ago. I know."

"I have to tell you about her…" Lavi's immaculately white hand trembles. He shakily reaches up to an unseen sky.

"I have to tell you about what happened to you…"

But Kanda presses down on the back of his hand and lays it down.

"I know. I read what you wrote. Why did you go chasing after that anyways?"

"Because I couldn't love you." Lavi says.

So take it instead, he means. Because I'm sorry. Take it, because I couldn't love you.

But Kanda is lifting him out of the casket, saying,

"That was another life, a long time ago."

"But you still love her," and it's said like, oh, grass is green, the sky is blue.

"I did. I do. I loved her, for a very long time. You know why, you've known longer than I have. And, I think you only know a little about this part, but I loved Alma too. For a little while."

"Oh…good." That leaves him out of it, then.

Kanda rests him in his arms like he did with Alma. Lavi gives him a bitter little smile, and it makes his heart twist.

But they're gone. I didn't know it, but they've been gone for a long time. And maybe you shouldn't love people like that for too long. Not when there's someone right in front of you who needs you. It doesn't matter what he says about it, if he just does. I should have learned that from Alma, but I didn't.

I learned it from you.

This is what Kanda wants to say to Lavi and should. But the woman, and Alma, and Lavi, are all a jumble in his head, and they all make his heart hurt in equal measure, and he gets confused. So he says,

"When I was little, Alma was my friend. But back then, I could only think of my own suffering—that girl I couldn't forget, and my pain from the innocence— so I never noticed Alma's. It wasn't until after I thought I killed him, that I… It's been one of the biggest regrets of my life—"

He falters, because Lavi is shaking his head. He smiles, but wetness is gathering in the corners of his eyes. He doesn't want to hear anymore. But Kanda doesn't understand. So he rocks Lavi back and forth and plunges on.

"And the girl. You found out her real story, but there's another ending I want to tell you about. She was with him. With Alma. But Alma was his own person, and my friend. He suffered a lot. I don't want him to be forgotten. You help me tell his story too. You can put them both in the records."

Kanda begins to ramble, losing his calm because Lavi won't say anything back.

"You'll see, you're going to help me…" and he trails off.

"Lavi, please—"

"That's not my name." Lavi interrupts him.

Kanda can't think. "What is?"

There is a long pause. Then, finally, the man in his arms laughs. He shrugs as best he can. "I don't know," he says on a tiny, tired note of finality.

Kana considers this. "It's alright. It doesn't matter. You're real. You're here. I'm with you."

Kanda wants to call his name, but he can't because he doesn't know it. He vows to find out. So Kanda holds him close and buries his face in his bruised throat. He does the best he can for him right now. He says:

"I'm sorry. Come back."

Twelve

The day after they miss the train in India.

It's ridiculous how cinematographic it gets. The day ripens to a lazy bronze, again, and barges in through the window and balcony. Eventually, they're just chiaroscuro cutouts even to each other.

But while it lasts, they're simply all over the place. At one point Lavi is even sitting up with the sheet folded over his stomach in serpentine fashion. His legs are akimbo and his hands are behind him propping him upright. He's laughing and the light behind him traces the contours of his face and body in a bright white line.

Kanda is stronger than Lavi. He's pretty sure, if he's determined, that he can flip Lavi nine times out of ten. But somehow, he loses count. It might be because most of the time they're side by side anyways. An arm thrown over this, a leg curled around that, as they talk.

At another point Lavi is under him. Kanda's hair must be loose because it's pooling on Lavi's shoulder. He doesn't see the lotuses. He sees Lavi. Lavi is golden with two tiger-green eyes. He has both hands behind his head, and is saying, "We're going to have to forget about today, too."

But his voice is liquid, and Kanda has never seen him smile like that before and it's because Lavi has never smiled like this before.

Kanda closes his eyes, and leans down.

Epilogue

Some time later

Lenalee kicks up her heels on the dock as Allen hands her a curried fish-ball skewer. She smiles, gazing past the bay to the horizon. It's funny that she can be so content looking out over at the ocean, considering what happened the last time she was on a boat. The snacks Allen bought for them are even a local Hong Kong specialty, so they're not even that far from where Anita's ship disembarked from the mainland.

But with Allen next to her, she can calmly settle the bouquet he brought to her in her lap. He got it from the famous flower market they walked through earlier. Orchids, camellias, ones whose names she does not know. She can even twist a few heads off their stems and send them afloat towards the boats with sails fanned out like the dorsal fins of sea-dragons.

They bite into the lumps of grilled fish paste, the thin yellow sauce dribbling down their chins. They talk, mouths full and breaths spicy because this is a vacation for them (sort of). They can do all taboo things they like.

So Allen swallows and asks bravely,

"If you loved somebody, what would you do to show it?"

However it's meant, Lenalee answers in the royal "you".

"Cry a lot," she says dryly. "I'm not proud of it, but I'm very emotional. If I cry over you, you'll know you're important to me."

Allen rubs off some of the curry at the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, not sure of what to say next. He might be a mite nervous so Lenalee thankfully goes on, thinking out loud.

"I know what you'd do. You'd make a grand, noble sacrifice. You're always doing that, Allen. Taking on our pain so we don't have to feel it anymore. Like with the doll and the tramp in Mater. And Suman. And Kanda. Come to think of it, because you love us, you free us to love!" Lenalee laughs at her own silliness and Allen ducks his head, embarrassed but pleased.

"What a surprise it was that Kanda's loved more than the rest of us put together." He puts in thoughtfully. His thoughts are on Kanda often nowadays, ever since his comrade gave up his freedom to help Allen with the fourteenth. Sure, they've freakily bonded over having tragic past lives that plague them now even in reincarnation. But Allen's case had to do with heavy biblical mythos and the fate of the world. Kanda's was always just a love story.

"Of course. But things haven't changed for him, you know. You know the way he shows he loves somebody?" Lenalee's eye glints when Allen shakes his head. "He'd kill anyone for that person, for any reason. Especially if the person he loves is in danger. It's like his way of offering flowers."

They both laugh heartily, although both glance briefly at the blooms nestled on top of Lenalee's legs.

"That just leaves Lavi, then. I know, he'd flirt shamelessly and annoy that person non-stop, in the hopes his charm will eventually get through." Allen jokes lightheartedly in the same vein, thinking about the way Lavi chased after Eliade that mission they picked up Krory.

"No, that's just him putting up an act," Lenalee objects, surprising Allen with how serious she sounds. "He's much more complex than he wants us to think, you know. And it's even harder for him than the rest of us, because he'd want to show that he cares without having that person understanding what he's doing."

She sighs and looks out over the water again. A gull keens.

"I don't know what he'd do," she says. "Write a story, maybe?"

Author's notes:

- It says Kanda/Lavi. But if I'm being honest…Kanda/Lavi/Alma/Kanda's past life (the man)/Alma's past life (the woman). Only you can't write that in a blurb. Or, at least I didn't.

-Poor Kanda, I think that Alma and the woman really were all he thought about… so no wonder he was so mean, those are some dark thoughts. But Kanda really did become a kinder person after what Allen did for him and Alma.

-Inspired by my favorite story about lost love, the manga "12 days" by June Kim.

12-Days-June-Kim/dp/1598166913/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1401683990&sr=8-2&keywords=12+days

-The woman exorcist is Aeris Gainsborough, pretty much. Yup.

-Listening to Sia's "Elastic Heart" and Lorde's "Gore and Glory" was what got me started on this.

-Blah, I don't think I'm going to try writing long-form again for a very long time…I seem to get stuck a lot…Hope some of you liked it.


End file.
